On (09 Jul 97) Fernando Ariel Gont wrote to Javier Kohen...
 FA> I read your message about the one I posted in Spanish....
 FA> I agree with you that people outside Argentina don't know anything
 FA> about our local BBSs.
I think it's safe to say that most of the world knows little about the
local BBSes in most parts of the world.
 FA> But about writing my messages in Spanish, I think that the fact that a
 FA> lot of people around the world speak English is not a valid reason for
 FA> me to write my messages in that language, because there are millions
 FA> that speak Spanish...  And writing my messages in Spanish is a way of
 FA> keeping our culture.....  (Why not?)
"Why not?"...because the echo rules require that messages be written in
English, not Spanish.  Fido rules make it relatively simple to start up
a new echo if you want, so if you want to send messages in Spanish (or
any other language) that's fairly easy to arrange.  Getting enough other
users in that echo to make it worthwhile to send messages may (or may
not) be more difficult...
I'd add as an aside that since most programming languages themselves are
based on English, most programmers are more or less required to
understand a fair amount of English.  As such, even though it's a lousy
choice as a universal language from other viewpoints, this does tend to
make English a fairly pragmatic choice of the "universal language" among
programmers.
 FA> I can't understand the difference between "declare" and "define" a
 FA> function.  (I understand by "defining a function" the writing of the
 FA> algorithm that the function must execute; and by "declaring", the
 FA> simple execution of that function.....    That's OK?
Not exactly.  Declaring a function means telling the compiler enough
about the function that it can compile a call to that function when it
needs to.  I.e. this is a function declaration:
int function(int param1);
This simply tells the compiler that `function' requires on parameter of
type int, and that it returns an int.  This information allows the
compiler to make correct choices of overloaded fucntions, and if
necessary do things like converting a char parameter to an int before
calling the function.
A function definition is the function itself.  I.e. it contains the body
of the function that instructs the compiler what to actually DO when the
function is called.
 FA> What are the "streams class" (or something like that :-)) ?
A set of classes devoted to doing I/O under C++.
 FA> What does "class" mean?. Does it mean "library"?
No.  A class is a set of related data and code that manipulates that
data, as well as providing a set of operations usable by other code.
 FA> What is the "<<" operator used for ?
Doing 1) left shifts on data of built in types, or 2) whatever it's been
overloaded to do on data of user defined types.  In the latter case, <<
is often overloaded to do output to a stream, but that's common practice
rather than a requirement.
 FA> This is a fragment of the book I'm reading, where the writer talks
 FA> about the "cout" object: "Special characters that can't be printed,
 FA> are are written with "escape sequences", which are composed of a
 FA> backslash (\), followed by a special code".....
 FA> But.... Aren't the "escape sequences" the ones used with the ANSI
 FA> driver ?  I mean, aren't them the ones that need the ANSI driver
 FA> installed in memory to be printed ?
Escape sequences aren't particularly related to cout at all.  Escape
sequences are a method of representing an otherwise unprintable
character in a character or string constant in C or C++.  Character and
string constants ARE probably used most often for input and output, but
that's not any kind of requirement.
As far as an ANSI driver goes, yes, some escape sequences are
interpreted by ANSI drivers, but others aren't.  Some things that C and
C++ consider escape sequences represent things that aren't related to
ANSI drivers at all.  For instance, \b, \r, \n and \a all represent
things that don't need an ANSI driver, and in fact will be more or less
ignored by most ANSI drivers.
 FA> The book talks about someyhing like "C-Code Generators" and about "C++
 FA> Native-Code Compilers"..... Do "C-Code Generators" still exist?
Sure.
 FA> In many parts of the book, the writer mentions "AT&T"....What's the
 FA> relation between "AT&T" and the C (or C++) language?
Both C and C++ were originally invented/defined by researchers at Bell
Labs, which was at the time part of AT&T.  (Bell Labs is now part of
Lucent Technologies...)
    Later,
    Jerry.
... The Universe is a figment of its own imagination.
--- PPoint 1.90
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